As you have all noticed, we’re delaying our attack for another week. I have a cold, and I’ll be damned I’m going to get into a fight with every nation in the world and the Establishment while I’m under the weather. Actually, I have it on good authority that I’m already damned, but I still hate fighting when I’m wearing my fuzzy bunny slippers. They’re made from real bunnies, you know.

Did you also know that Dr. Adam Numeral (a.k.a. The Atomic Number) actually invented a cure for the common cold back in the 1950’s? Unfortunately, its creation coincided with the Livid Plague’s manufacture of a virulent, mutation-prone, and deadly super-cold. The Atomic Number managed to dilute Livid’s virus with his cure, but all it did was reduce the severity of the symptoms. Today, the regular cold virus is dead and all the colds people get are actually created by the weakened super-cold bug. If I’m every time traveling to that era, someone remind me to kill the Livid Plague.

We’ll be running with minimum staffing this week to keep the bug from spreading throughout our organization and forcing us to delay the attack another week. Check in with your shift supervisors to determine what your hours are.

Have a good week everyone. And remember, the world is already ours – we’re just taking the week off from our duties.

Giant robots have their place in the scheme of things. Certainly, they have been dead useful for keeping the Pacific Ocean’s population of giant monsters under control. The way Japan shattered China’s magical protections during World War Two left the entire Pacific Rim open to the rampaging critters. Certainly the superpowered population held them off for a while, but it was the rise of the giant robot industry that really brought the problem under control.

Still, to an organization like ours, they have a limited utility. Like any large military vehicle, they can be used to invade a country, but they are not terribly subtle. Yes, you could take a city with them, but your only option to deal with a building full of enemy combatants is to crush it. Technefarious is dedicated to as smooth a transition to our rule over the planet as possible. Ultimately, giant robots just are not subtle enough weapons for us.

The MechaMen have never been big on subtle. In the four decades of their existence, they have served as mercenaries for some of the worst tyrants and tryant-wannabees on the planet. They have a leaderboard for how bystanders have been crushed under the giant metal feet of each pilot’s robot. The two times they have managed to carve out their own government, they have ruled every bit as harshly as their usual type of employers.

I’m a villain, but I don’t like these guys. So when it came time to test our new weapon platform, it made sense to me to give our inglorious competition a bad turn.

It works. The earthquake machine we have been building as the centerpiece of Project Jelly Doughnut performed as expected. The Mechamen’s complex consisted of large hangers carved into a mountain. Past tense. It is now an oversized sinkhole. The containment field for the earthquake machine also worked. None of Earth’s the seismographs registered the attack, and the snow on the far side of Mechmen’s mountain did not even avalanche. Our science department reports that the containment field was not as focused as they expected, spreading the event over a wider area than their calculations predicted. They were disappointed, but I’ve done this sort of work to know that the real world factors always require refining the theory. However, large scale testing of the earthquake machine will have to wait until we start the final part of Project Jelly, Operation Flat Pancake.

We lost no one during the operation, but many of the MechaMen’s henchmen and on-base families died. You may want to take a moment to consider that.

Our facilities will be running with minimum staffing this week, although all hands are expected back Saturday to start the final preparations for the launch of Operation Flat Pancake on Monday.

Enjoy this week everyone, because we are going to have a busy next week and we’ll be even busier afterwards if we succeeded. The world is already ours – we’re just going to be bringing its attention to that fact.

Does it still count as supervillainy if you accidentally save the world? Admittedly, we have saved the Earth before, because part of wanting to conquer the world means keeping anyone else from wrecking it. I delivered the killing blow to the Solar System Sweeper. Green Needle herbicided the Arboreal Flesh. Technefarious as a whole joined the Unholy Assembly and betrayed our fellow villains (some of whom were real jerks) by saving the superheroes (we needed their firepower).

This time we stumbled into it. Saber-Cat stopped by my office let me know he intended to attack a visiting group of aliens. I would like to say he was asking permission, but he actually wanted to use enough Technefarious resources that I would notice if they were missing. So, leaving me behind to mind the store, Saber lead a group consisting of more lieutenants than henchmen to confront the extra-terrestrials on Establishment territory.

On the interstellar level, Earth has the reputation like that of an island full of dangerous primitives: too crude to have anything worth trading and too tough to conquer outright. Nevertheless, the realities of galactic and extra dimensional geography make Earth too convenient a crossroads for us to be avoided entirely. Most aliens try to minimize their exposure, but it is no secret that the U.N. is keenly interested in making peaceful contact. To that end, the U.N. and the Establishment maintain the Extraterrestrial Monitoring Center, both to gather information on the aliens living among us and to try to forge diplomatic ties with the galactic empires that surround us.

It was one of those forging of ties that Saber-Cat wanted to crash. Saber is immortal and older than humankind, and he said that the Turperilliaks coming for a visit were actually the return of a aliens species that had claimed Earth as part of their empire for a couple of centuries before a nasty civil war on their core planets left the outlying Earth to drift back to its independent status. He also claimed that the aliens lead diplomat was Earth’s former governor during that long lost time. Keeping the Establishment from getting easy access to alien technology fits in with Technefarious’s goals, so I approved his requests for the operation and turned him loose.

It turns out that the lead diplomat really was the old governor in charge and that he led a fleet of cloaked spaceships bent on reconquering the Earth. The diplomacy was just a cover to let him scout the planet before trying to take it by force. The Establishment did not appreciate Saber-Cat’s interference but also did not ignore the lack of disclosure about the cloaked fleet when it was revealed. That kicked off a lesson for the Turperilliaks about why the rest of the universe considers us to be a planet full of dangerous primitives.

It took a week a half to drive them off. Not great, but not as bad as the thrity-seven days it took to get rid of the Graxic Empire in the 1980’s. Still, I prefer the invasions we can wrap up in an afternoon when we can get them.

Unfortunately, this sort of fight is rarely without casualties. Technefarious lost seven henchmen when they delivered a bomb to the mothership of the Turperilliak Home Fleet. The attack was part of the final strike on the Turperilliak ships still stationed in their core worlds. It will hopefully convince them to leave us alone in the future. Unfortunately, the distance involved put them far beyond the reach of our soul catchers. We already held their memorial service, but I wanted to commemorate them here as well. Do not forget the sacrifice of Henchmen 42S-9L (Ivan), 58A-4S (Alexandra), 89T-9C (Astra), 04M-3I (Moira), 63R-2E (Dan), 11U-0G (Chad), and 78G-4D (Stephen).

I am running long here, so check the bulletin boards for notes about this week’s activities.

Have a good week everyone. And remember, the world is already ours – we are just sharing it other human governments for a bit.

Welcome back from your weekend everyone. Keep your head down and your ammo handy for now. Instructions for our part in the counterattack will follow soon. Remember, the world is ours – those aliens just don’t realize it yet.